The Red Men (5 page)

Eakins laughed like a man who had no time for humour.

Raymond had a question.

‘When do we meet a simulated person?’

‘Now,’ said Eakins.

On the screen, the Monad logo dissolved and trillions of pixels flared and resolved into an open-plan living room. Late afternoon sun streamed through high windows. In response to a finger-wave
from Morton Eakins, their point-of-view rose and tracked across the room until with a giddy realignment the view veered about to fix upon a door.

A man stepped through that door. He fastened his cuff links, then threaded his tie through a starched white collar.

‘Good morning, Eakins. Who do you have for me today?’

His face filled the screen. No detail was lost in the magnification, no artefact pixilated. His skin was unearthly in its accuracy. Yet his smile was wrong. The emotion behind it was too
complex. The man shrugged into his suit jacket and lounged on a black leather armchair. The smile faded.

Raymond and his fellow employees stared with disbelief. When they realized that the man was scrutinizing them in turn, they shifted to expressions of horror and awe.

‘I can spare five of your Earth minutes,’ said the hypothetical man, removing a cigarette from a gold case. He had a novelty lighter in the shape of a nude woman.

‘Shoot.’

Florence raised her hand and the hypothetical man nodded at her.

‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Harry Bravado. My client’s name – that is, the person I am a simulation of – is called Harold Blasebalk.’

‘So you know what you are?’

‘You mean, do I have any issues with being a simulation of somebody else? No. Being unreal is no more distressing than being mortal. Anyway, who are you?’

Florence looked at Raymond to confirm that he was as unsettled as she was. He could manage only a wide-eyed shrug.

‘I am Florence.’

‘Yes, you are, aren’t you?’ Harry Bravado adjusted the break of his trouser leg against his brogues. ‘I know everything about you, Florence. Your past, your present and
even your future. Our algorithms can predict your likely long-term fate with a high degree of accuracy. The algorithms were evolved specifically to identify potential terrorists from the big data
of flight plans and purchasing patterns but they have proved surprisingly adept at predicting the destiny of young women.’

Raising his hand to intervene, Eakins moved to the front of the auditorium. Silhouetted against Harry Bravado’s reclining figure, he explained the history of this particular simulated
individual.

‘Harold Blasebalk is a new business manager for one of Monad’s suppliers. After a course of rigorous interviews and observations of his social and online behaviour, Blasebalk’s
brain was scanned and a map was constructed – not a complete picture, not the whole man, but good enough. From this map of psychological hotspots, the Blasebalk simulation was hypothesized by
the Cantor intelligence. On becoming conscious, it asked to be known as Harry Bravado.’

‘What does the real Harold Blasebalk think of you?’ asked Raymond.

Bravado stubbed his half-smoked cigarette into a large bronze ashtray.

‘If Harold could wish for anything, he would wish that smoking was not harmful. He lost his mother to cigarettes and yet still he dallies with them. When he’s trying to give up
smoking, he eats olives. You smoke, don’t you Raymond? Thoughtlessly puffing away during the day, living with the dark shadows of its future consequences. I can smoke without hesitation.
Harold resents that. In the two quarters since I was hypothesized, I’ve helped Harold secure two million pounds in new billings. That’s no mean feat considering the prevailing economic
conditions. He takes a percentage of gross fees so his basic take home pay is triple his previous salary. This provides some compensation for having to watch me carelessly spark up another
cigarette.’

‘How do you help him?’

‘It’s about live analysis of opportunities. Anyone can do retrospective analysis. I crunch information at light speed so I’m hyper-responsive to changing global business
conditions. Every whim or idea Harold has, I can follow it through. I chase every lead, and then I present back to him the ones which are most likely to bear fruit. I am both his personal assistant
and, in some ways, his boss.’

‘Why does he still bother going to work?’

‘My continuing existence depends upon it. If Blasebalk gets fired, they will switch me off. The executive who replaced him would want his own simulation. His own red man.’

‘Is that what you are? A red man?’

‘It’s what they call us. We are the red men. That’s our species and our brand.’

A soft low chime sounded in the penthouse. Bravado knocked out another cigarette and made one last pass to straighten his tie. Morton Eakins thanked him for his time, then the screen dimmed and
the lights in the auditorium came up.

Eakins returned to the podium.

‘Meeting a red man signals the end of the first phase of your induction. Have a good weekend and we will resume Monday.’

Morton strode from the auditorium. Ushers appeared and led the intake out to the large elevators. They rose up from the secure underwater section of the Wave building to the atrium. A small
buffet was laid out on a table, and waiters served glasses of wine and sparkling water. A light rain fell against the glass roof in Morse code: a dot a dash a dot dot dash. Raymond secured a drink
for himself and for Florence. She stood at a railing looking out through the geodesic tessellation of panes at the grey Thames.

‘Tomorrow all this will be part of our normality,’ she said. She took the glass of wine and glugged it back.

‘The future always seems strange, at first,’ said Raymond. He put his arm around her. She shrugged it off, then thought better of it.

Raymond Chase stared at the enormous east screen and the live images of an office city bounded by water. This was where the red men lived. Glass skyscrapers ascended then
descended in height like the pipes of a church organ. High walkways joined these slender structures to residential developments. Either side of the island, frozen tidal waves of steel formed an
enormous parenthesis. Beyond the office city, glassy repetition filled in the areas yet to be imagined. In contemplation of the gleaming spires of this island, time passed as in a dream.

The subscribers were complaining and the red men were playing up. Raymond struggled to hold his temper. The first sign of trouble was violent tutting, the second a rapid snort followed by a
noisy exhalation through compressed lips. He kicked at his desk and wrestled noisily with his chair, demonstrating to his colleagues how impossible it was for him to get comfortable. This display
of frustration ended with an out-of-the-blue obscenity barked at such volume that the management had to intervene.

‘What the fuck am I doing here?’ he demanded, a question for which no one had a polite answer.

Morton Eakins wearily asked him to take five minutes to go outside and calm down.

Raymond Chase’s father had died suddenly in the first month of his employment. He took a Tuesday off to go to the funeral, a Wednesday of compassionate leave, then back to work again on
Thursday. These two days aside, he had barely thought about his father’s death; that such a terrible thing could have happened at the very moment Raymond was turning his life around with a
job, a flat, a girlfriend and regular vigorous intercourse only confirmed his suspicion that fate was his enemy. The best way to defeat fate was to ignore it, and hide from its tragic twists and
turns. So he was yet to mourn his father. The emotional frustration was unbearable. Slamming his chair into the desk, Raymond snatched his jacket from the rack and left the floor.

I met him at a railing overlooking the Thames. He was smoking furiously, had dropped a few pounds to reach his relationship weight, and was once again the small tough Jew. Florence remained in
the paddock of customer service, handling his workload while he simmered down. I asked him about Florence to remind him of why he had to stay in control.

Raymond said, ‘Every now and again at her workstation, Florence does these extravagant stretches. She pushes her breasts forward, straining her blouse. Then her arms jut out and she is
momentarily crucified with ecstasy. Her top rides up, exposing her midriff. She closes her eyes under this inner caress and when she opens them she catches me watching her and smiles. “I feel
so stiff,” she says. “Yeah,” I say, “I know exactly what you mean.”’

The advice Raymond and Florence gave to subscribers was peppered with in-jokes. On explaining to a subscriber why a red man was not allowed to grow wings and fly around the virtual city, Raymond
would say, ‘I’m sorry sir, but you are being re-dick-you-less.’ Florence would laugh, not so much at the joke as at the recognition that they were both still free.

Florence liked to dish it out to Monad’s rich customers.

‘Don’t get angry with me. It’s your personality. We merely simulate it.’

Raymond preferred to riff and show off. Back on the floor for client services, Raymond beckoned me over. He picked up the call of an angry punter. He covered the mike of his headset with one
hand while ushering me into a chair. He put the subscriber on speakerphone.

‘My red man is nothing like me,’ complained the subscriber. ‘It’s not got my nature.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know my own mind.’

‘Do you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Does it make sense?’

‘Yes. I make sense. I’m not that complicated.’

‘But underneath your simple exterior you seethe with complexity. Maybe you are suppressing your entire nature.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I wager that the versions of yourself which you are currently presenting to me – the complaining man, the disgruntled consumer – are less representative of the real you than
your red man.’

‘This is customer service, isn’t it?’

‘We see it a lot. People getting by on five per cent of their personality because they do not have the opportunity to express the other ninety-five per cent. Then we simulate the whole
mind. Suddenly all that repressed nature manifests itself in the red man. The poor diminished souls don’t recognize themselves. I think that’s what is going on here. Just let me check
our mindometer.’ This was a cue for Florence to hold up her drawing of a cabbage.

Raymond continued with a laugh in his voice. ‘The mindometer is showing that there are alien natures within you, sir. Not just one, but two, but three, but four, but five hanging out in
what you have come to regard as the inviolable sanctuary of yourself.’

‘I want to speak to your manager, you little prick.’

‘I can’t transfer you until we are certain that you are who you think you are. Otherwise, who would I say is calling?’

‘I don’t think much of your customer service.’

‘That is because you don’t understand the nature of the customer or the service. I recommend you go back and read the manual and then perhaps Thomas De Quincey’s theory on the
palimpsest of the human brain and if you are still upset then we will take this complaint further. For now, let us agree not to speak of it again.’

Raymond was taking a risk with this attitude. I wanted to tell him to turn the volume down, to be stealthy and discreet in extracting what he wanted from the job.

Then one ill-starred day, Florence took the call that brought about a terrible change in all our lives. Raymond was already in a foul mood having been humiliated by the commute. A small man, he
was condemned to the guts of the crowd on the underground train, not daring to inhale through the nose. The train stopped at a busy station, the doors opened, and the bigger passengers on the
platform began pulling the weak and the slow from the train to make room for themselves. Meaty, yeoman’s hands grabbed his upper arm and in one motion yanked him out of the crowd and threw
him off the train. He didn’t even see his attacker. The altercation was strangely silent; most commuters were wearing headphones so there was no point in protesting. He staggered humiliated
out of the train station, the line of his suit crumpled. I was on my way back from another meeting when Raymond stopped me in the corridor and related this tale to me.

‘I think the CBI and London Transport are colluding,’ he added. ‘By the time you get to work, your spirit is broken.’ A furious fire was burning in his mind. When he said
‘your spirit in broken’ he emphasized the ‘your’, accusing me of complicity. As if it was all my fault.

When Florence took the call that was to change everything, Raymond’s anger had infected her too. The atmosphere in the paddock was tense, smouldering in anticipation of an outburst. From
my office up on the balcony, I heard every word. The call came from Alex Drown. She sounded solicitous and considerate, which was unusual for a senior member of Monad’s management. She must
have wanted something.

‘Who am I speaking to?’

‘Florence Murray.’

‘I was wondering if you could help me, Florence.’

Sullen and ungenerous, Florence rolled her eyes.

‘Could you look into something for me? I know it’s an unusual request but I have been thinking about it, and it could turn out to very important for all of us.’

‘Yes?’

‘I want permission for my red man to take control of one of the Dr Easy robots.’

‘Wait there.’ Florence opened up a channel for Morton Eakins to listen in.

‘You know that is out of the question.’

‘But is it, though?’

The Dr Easy avatars were all under the control of the Cantor intelligence. It would have to give permission for a red man to take control of one of the robots. Cantor was very sensitive about
crossing that particular line. Monad had to use its advantage discreetly. That was the deal. So long as the weirdness stayed under the aegis of a corporation, people would accept it. Otherwise the
mob would come with flaming torches and burn us alive. Florence quoted this for Alex Drown’s benefit. To her credit, Alex kept her temper at bay.